


Atropos

by ClementineStarling



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 19:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10600785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling/pseuds/ClementineStarling
Summary: John Smith expects a special delivery from the Pacific States.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a fic exchange with [vice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious).  
> He wanted something dark about John and Frank. So I put them into a camp situation. This is the maximum I could bring myself to do. Poor Frank. :(
> 
>  **Content note:** This fic doesn't have any graphic descriptions of violence but it is set in a concentration camp, it talks about the holocaust and has implications of torture as well as some homoerotic/abusive overtones which are super inappropriate. Also Nazi/perpetrator POV. You've been warned.

It's a sunny day, little clouds wander over the bright blue sky like a flock of sheep. At the far end of the compound a group of trees sways gently in the breeze. Everything is quiet. 

Obergruppenführer Smith is standing next to his car, watching the men take their positions in perfected consonance. They work like clockwork, perfectly attuned to each other, small cogs in the big machine, a paradigm of German-inspired efficiency. They're expecting a train, a transport from the Pacific States scheduled for arrival at 14:35 and they want to make sure everything is ready. Smith's presence certainly adds extra motivation.

He hasn't been to a camp in years. There was less and less necessity; for the visits as well as for the camps. The resistance has been squashed, most undesirables have been eradicated. The work is almost done, and he can't say he isn't relieved. Soon it will be ten years that Cincinnati was closed down. Eventually there had been no need for it anymore, it had served its purpose. It is time to leave this stain on their history behind and move on, to a better future. A world in which Smith wants his daughters to grow up.

John Smith doesn't like to be reminded of the phase when the Reich was still striking roots in North America and he certainly doesn't enjoy being here, at the ramp of Belle Mead, New Jersey, waiting for a special delivery from the Kempeitai. But it can't be helped, there are certain things a man must do. This is as much political as it personal. The whole transport is a proof of good will, but this one extradition above all. A favour from Chief Inspector Kido himself.

Smith left the file on the back seat of the car but he's studied it intensively enough to be able to recall its contents at will. A man's life squeezed between manila paper, the first page bearing the red stamp that's not only stigma but death sentence. Next to it the picture of a man in his thirties, attractive, with an angular face. Not someone you would recognize as a Semite at first glance. 

So that's Juliana's boyfriend, Smith thought when he looked at the photo for the first time. No wonder Joe was jealous. As he flipped through the folder, he also began to understand what Juliana saw in him. Why she wanted to marry him. He's a handsome, sophisticated man. Interested in the arts. A dreamer. Loyal to a fault.

What a shame he is racially inferior. Smith can see his appeal. If he weren't Jewish, he could try to turn him, he would make a valuable asset. Agents within the Resistance are hard to come by. But as things stand that's not an option. There is only one way this will end. It's not a matter of choice but one of duty.

When the train arrives the usual racket breaks loose, dogs are barking, people are crying, men are shouting. What's happening in the camps is not a secret anymore, it's not even just a rumour. The slaughter has been going on for too long to hush it up. Too many people were involved, too many of the prisoners escaped (not many, but enough to spread the word). Now new arrivals are aware what's in store for them, even though these days most of them are put to work first, before they're to go on their last journey through the chimney. 

The SS doctors responsible for the selection at the ramp have changed their approach; now they isolate the persons eligible for 'special treatment', pick out those to die rather than those valuable enough to be kept alive for a while. The rates have reversed, compared to the heyday of Operation Tristan when the trains were arriving day and night and the crematorium at Cincinnati was operating non stop. Then only a handful of people per each train were selected for labour, the major part was directly dispatched of. Today it's the other way around: the majority of this transport will live to see the next day. It would be a waste of workforce to kill them at once. The Reich has grown more conscious of its resources.

John Smith has always considered it a questionable mercy not to send everyone into the gas directly from the train, and he's not too keen on being reminded why. He is here for Frink, not to see parents separated from their children or hear the wailing and sobbing, begging and bargaining. Why put more people through this than absolutely necessary? Obergruppenführer Smith has always believed in making this as easy on everyone as humanly possibly. 

An officer calls out the name, Frank Frink, it sounds snappy, almost German. How ironic. 

Soon Juliana's boyfriend is singled out from the crowd and pushed towards Smith's car by an eager Unterscharführer.

“The prisoner you asked for, Obergruppenführer,” he says, standing to attention, arm raised in an energetic salute.

“Thank you, Unterscharführer.” Smith gives the man a thin-lipped smile. He tends to find the zeal of low rank officers a bit tiresome. They are often too anxious to please, too thirsty for attention, for a metaphorical pat on the head by a senior officer, as if that made them more eligible for a promotion. Smith has not patience for this kind of behaviour. Men lingering around for the sake of attention tend to put their own interest above the cause. The Obergruppenführer prefers soldiers to fulfil their duty without making a fuss. That's why he likes to work with Raeder and Klemm. They're as modest as they are efficient. And perhaps even more importantly they're attentive without being nosy. 

“I will take it from here,” he has to say when the man shows no inclination to leave, and then to remove any remaining doubt: “You are dismissed.” He makes a mental note to consider talking to his superior about this lapse in proper procedure. 

When the Unterscharführer returns to his duties Smith finally has the chance to take a closer look at Frank Frink. 

He has cast down his eyes, his whole body is signalling surrender. Not unlike Juliana used to stand before him. Perhaps that's what the Japs teach them in the Pacific States, obedience, submission. Smith has to admit that it suits him. Better than it suited Juliana. It reminds him of Joe a bit, in certain situations. Perhaps staging this meeting here was a waste of time and energy after all, he muses, perhaps he could also have had him sent directly to New York and achieve the same effect. Have him cowed and cooperative without having to utter as much as an open threat.

But then maybe this is just an act. From what the file told him, and the Kempeitai seemed to have been remarkably thorough in their report, Frink isn't someone to break easily. He didn't betray Juliana, not to save his own life, not even when they threatened to kill his sister and their children. Defiance is something Smith always admires in an opponent. He hopes his dealings with Frink will be interesting.

Smith is convinced he'll do a better job of this than Kido. Not necessarily because he's per se better at interrogating captives than the Kempeitai; they just didn't seem overly concerned about the case. Just as they're never overly concerned with adhering to the racial laws of the Reich, regardless the agreement of their governments. Why else would they have Frink set free, even after they had arrested him for their investigation? He is not only a Semite, which in the Reich would alone warrant his execution, but one with ties to the resistance. Apparently they let him go without at least putting a tail on him. It's a kind of sloppiness Obergruppenführer Smith wouldn't tolerate in his domain and it sheds a very unflattering light on Chief Inspector Kido. But again, nothing of this is important right now.

They need to get moving, start the interrogation, he doesn't have all day.

As they pass the gates and walk into the compound Frink gives no indication he's looking at the barbed wire, the electric fences, the barracks, not even at the prisoners, grey-faced and transparently thin, more ghosts than living people. But Smith knows he is stealing glances, they all do. That's when the horror starts creeping in. That's when they understand they have entered hell and will never escape it.

There is something so utterly horrific about these camps, and Smith believes that somehow fear is more likely to have the desired effect on Frink than straightforward torture. It's easy to tear people apart but to truly break them, to chip away their resistance, their sense of self until they're just echoes of themselves, unable to contain their secrets, that's quite another thing. The camps are designed for this purpose though – to dehumanize humans, for grinding them down, squeezing the last ounce of strength out of them before they are discarded. The soap story might be a legend, but on a more abstract level it does hold some truth. People are used up in these camps, consumed. Who would be so foolish as to pass up the chance to escape them? Who is really strong enough to resist when they see others deliberately stripped of their humanity, bit by bit, day after day, who wouldn't succumb when faced with the same fate? 

People are so brittle in the end, they crumble at the slightest touch.

Surely Frink is clever enough to see that. Smith hopes he is. He would like to grant him a quick, merciful death. For Juliana's sake. But also because he's not a cruel man. He doesn't enjoy this, he never has. It's not who he is.

Once they have reached the interrogation room Smith orders Frink to undress. 

What a waste to kill him, Smith thinks, he really is quite easy on the eye. Smooth skin, toned muscle. But then he can hardly keep a Jewish boy as a pet, no matter how pretty. Even the idea is ludicrous. It's something Rudy would have come up with. He had never any qualms to bend the rules when it came to pursuing his pleasure. In general moral scruples used to be an alien concept for him. However they managed to catch up with him in the end.

Obergruppenführer Smith is pushing the memories of Rudolph Wegener to the back of his mind. 

He reaches out, grips Frink's face and tilts it upwards. His fingers are digging into his cheeks, into the angle of his jaw. It's like he would hold a dog, perhaps that's what makes it almost intimate. He's got a lovely mouth, lush rosy lips, expressive eyes, brimming with hatred. The lips will be chapped, the eyes dull when Smith is through with him. It's inconsequential. All the sympathy John Smith might feel for him, the compassion and human connection, even the subdued surge of lust, they're just part of a weakness he can't allow himself here. Here, everyone leaves their humanity at the gates.

“Where is Juliana Crain?” he asks. 

It will be the first and the last question he has for Frank Frink.

~


End file.
